How to Make a Family Part I

So it's been brought to my attention that i've yet to fully tell the story of my husband, my kids, and how our family was made. No time like the present. I'll start at the beginning, and since Darren is part of my family, I'll start with him.

In October/November of 2004 Darren and I met online on a 'meeting place' website. I know, I know; not exactly the 'boy meets girl, they exchange glances and love at first sight....' but that is how the story begins. (I was living in Lincoln, Ne again and he was living in Huntington Beach, CA.) He had suffered some pretty ugly mishaps dating people from online and was preparing to delete his account from the site. I'd had had a fiasco myself and before canceling my account was explaining it to a friend, showing him the site and all that, when Darren saw my profile and sent me a generic 'hey there' message. Well that day we said our hellos, we still canceled our memberships but started to IM on yahoo!chat periodically.

We chatted pretty much everyday, we each had webcams so we could also see each other. We talked on the phone a few times, but didn't really start talking a lot until the day before Thanksgiving. I'd been in a really bad car accident ($ bad, not injury bad) with my sister Kate. Since there were no injuries the police were taking their time and I had time to talk. After that we talked quite a bit everyday, mostly sitting in front of the computer/webcams. I can't say it was exactly like a dating, but it was way more than the Pony Express ever had to offer.

I went out to visit over New Year's Eve. We fell madly in love and while still there I started looking for a job as a nanny. I got a response from a resume the next day, left for home on Friday, Saturday had a phone interview, Sunday accepted the position and was packing my bags getting ready to drive cross country to move from Lincoln to Ladera Ranch (southern Orange County). Darren flew out the Friday after I'd left from my visit and we drove together back to OC. I moved into the family home I'd be working in and our life really began.

*At this point it's necessary to interject a subplot so you'll understand something later. Darren and I had started this thing when we were talking on the phone-pre-meeting-, although we knew we had feelings for each-other, we never wanted to say "I love you" over the phone before we met, and instead we'd say "I love the Jesus in you". We are both firm believers that the truly lovable parts are the parts that most reflect Christ in our lives anyway.*

Of course the engagement tale is romantic. We were at Fishfest, an all day christian music festival. We'd been working all morning for a friend who owns her own christian clothing line, we were building up her booth, getting things organized and pretty much just setting her up. Finally by afternoon we take a break and go listen to Toby Mac on the main stage. In the middle of a song Darren opens up his messenger bag and pulls out a brand new Ipod Mini still in the box. I was thrilled that he bought me this great gift but was loving the music so I told him I'd get it out later. He pestered me and was like 'No, you really need to open it now!" okay okay I thought. I opened it up (Ipods have a box that opens up like a book and you see the face of the Ipod) I was like "cool! silver metal, great can I listen to the concert now?" "NO, look at it!" sheesh this guy was persistent.

Well I take the Ipod out, turn it over in my hand and engraved on the back is "i love the Jesus in you, will you marry me?" my jaw drops and I look up to see darren getting down on one knee opening a really unique ring box with a gorgeous diamond ring inside. I look up and he's like 'yes?' "of course!" well obviously everyone around us is like "what's going on over there?" and when they figure it out they're all clapping and cheering. it was pretty cool. and we got to spend the rest of the day walking on air.

We planned a really low key wedding, only about 50 people, of which only 5 were our family members. In August we had taken a 10 day trip to Wisconsin (to meet his dad) and then to Boston/Lynn Mass to meet the rest of his family and friends. Our honeymoon was spent in Santa Barbara, we stayed at the Orchid Inn which is an amazing bed and breakfast. It was really amazing that so much had happened in almost exactly a year's time.

Little did we know that this was only the first hill on the roller coaster that was to define our lives.